RA-1 Multi-mode Collision Avoidance Technology for UAVs

The MMCAS program leverages off of extensive Government investment in research to provide autonomous UAV operations in the NAS. The focus of the program is to develop a prototype situation awareness system (MMCAS) for installation on UAVs that integrates the situation awareness information provided by TCAS with detection and tracking information on non-cooperative intruders to avoid a mid-air collision. Non-cooperative intruders are detected and tracked by a relatively low cost, light weight, optical Detect and Avoid (DAA) system that has been developed and matured under other research programs. The TCAS is already approved for installation on Global Hawk and demonstrations of DAA on surrogate UAV aircraft have verified that the DAA technology meets Global Hawk and Predator requirements. This program upgrades the existing UAV collision avoidance capability, which now only supports cooperative aircraft operations, to include all aircraft in close proximity. The innovative work to be accomplished on the program is to design the fusion software and user interface needed to implement the integration of the two systems. The fusion software can reside in either the existing onboard TCAS interface computer or on a separate microprocessor added for this purpose, depending on the specific UAV system requirements